Arsinoe II

Arsinoe II (316 BC-270 BC) was the Queen of Thrace, Anatolia, and Macedonia with her first husband Lysimachus and co-ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt with her brother-husband Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

Biography
Arsinoe was born in Memphis, Egypt, the first daughter of Ptolemy I Soter and Berenice I. She was raised in the new capital city of Alexandria, and she was given a high education. At the age of 15, she married the 60-year-old Lysimachus, one of Alexander the Great's generals and a contemporary of her father who was 45 years her senior. She encouraged him to execute his oldest son by an earlier marriage, but her plans to advance her own children's claims were thwarted when her husband was killed in battle shortly afterwards. Arsinoe then married her own half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos, who was estranged from their father, and was making a particularly murderous career for himself in Macedonia. He saw her and her children as dangerous rivals, promptly killing two of her children after their marriage. She managed to escape, and a year later Keraunos was killed in battle fighting against an invading army of Gauls. Eventually Arsinoe made her way to Egypt and a few years later married Ptolemy II, who was her junior by some eight years. He exiled his first wife Arsinoe I, although her children remained in favor - the future Ptolemy III Euergetes was one of them. Propaganda celebrated the union of brother and sister, and they appeared together on coins, making Arsinoe the first female member of the family to be depicted on a coin in her lifetime. She was given the name "Philadelphus" ("brother-loving"), and she was compared to Zeus' sister-wife Hera and Osiris' sister-wife Isis, adding to the growing divinity of the Ptolemies. Arsinoe actively and capably assisted her brother until she died in 270 BC.